Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007

'R Word' Noticeably Absent from Condo Ads

By John Geluardi
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

To listen to a local radio advertising campaign, the Anchor Cove subdivision at Marina Bay is a wonderful place to live.
The waterfront condominiums, developed by Signature Properties, offer an easy commute to the entire Bay Area, plenty of fine dining nearby and stunning views of San Francisco Bay.

But the beguiling ads fail to mention that Anchor Cove -- with its "salt-tinged breeze" and "carefree living at its best" -- is in Richmond, a city with an undeserved, one-dimensional reputation for homicide and a perpetually smoking refinery. Signature's omission has piqued several city leaders, who say Richmond should, for a change, get credit for the charming amenities being used to flog the condos that sell for $500,000 and up.

"I think Signature should be promoting the city rather than making it seem that Marina Bay has nothing to do with Richmond as a whole," Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said. "We need to make it clear to the Bay Area, and beyond, that Richmond is a wonderful place to live." [emphasis added]

Richmond's chronic violence and heavy industry have dominated the city's reputation for years, but that's not the whole story. The crime problem predominantly occurs in about three square miles, a small percentage of the city's sprawling 56 square miles. Furthermore, Richmond residents have access to 5,700 acres of open space, which includes the 2,428-acre Point Pinole Regional Shoreline and the 2,315-acre Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.

There also are 32 miles of shoreline, much of which can be bicycled or hiked thanks to the fact that Richmond has completed more miles of the Bay Trail than any of the other 49 Bay Area cities it will eventually pass through.
And Richmond has a wealth of historical resources, including the nine sites of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Homefront National Historical Park. There is also the parapeted, red-brick Winehaven building at Point Molate, which was the largest winery in the state until Prohibition closed it in 1919; the 77-year-old Ford Assembly Plant; and artsy Point Richmond, where all the buildings on the town square are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Signature Properties President Mike Ghielmetti said his company focuses on neighborhoods when advertising new developments. "You only have so much time in a radio advertisement," Ghielmetti said. "We're emphasizing the neighborhood here, which is what we do in most of our advertisements."

But a check of Signature Properties' Web site shows that of 14 Signature developments currently selling in the Bay Area, only Anchor Cove and the Harborwalk, in an industrial section of Oakland, omit their locations. In the other 12 developments, the host city is prominently mentioned.

Developers omitting the "R word" in their sales pitches is not new. Real estate marketing campaigns in Richmond's satellite neighborhoods in the El Sobrante Valley were notorious for failing to mention that the homes were technically in the city of Richmond, said City Councilman John Marquez.

"If Richmond is good enough to develop in, I don't think there should be any embarrassment in the way these properties are advertised," Marquez said. "It's the only way we're going to let the world know that Richmond has a lot of good qualities and begin to change our image."

Ghielmetti insists the "R word" was not intentionally left out of Anchor Cove's advertising. "We were not trying to de-emphasize Richmond; we were trying to emphasize neighborhoods," he said. "We like building in Richmond. If we didn't like building in Richmond, we wouldn't build in Richmond."

Reach John Geluardi at 510-262-2787 or jgeluardi@cctimes.com.